25/08/2021 (Agence Europe) – A “devastating impact”. This is how the European airport trade organisation, ACI Europe, has described the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on air passenger traffic in the first half of 2021. In the first six months of the year, the rate fell by 76.9% compared to the first half of 2019, the pre-pandemic reference period. In the first half of 2020, the decline – in comparison with the previous year – was 64.2%. “This is a direct result of the travel restrictions reinstated by European states at the beginning of the year, and which remained in place throughout the spring as the continent was hit by the third wave of the pandemic ”, summarised ACI Europe’s Director General, Olivier Jankovec, in a statement. (TM)